Technical Publishing With Microsoft Word

8/8/2019 Technical Publishing With Microsoft Word

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Layout Tips for Technical P apers inMicrosoft W ord 2000

John KrummMicrosoft Research

Redmond, WA, USAHere are some tips that I have gathered for making technical publications inMicrosoft Word 2000. The tips are written for someone with experience usingMS Word who needs a boost on the basic techniques for specific layoutproblems. In developing and documenting these techniques, I have in mind aregular, technical conference paper with columns, equations, and figures. Thereis an accompanying MS Word document that gives examples of thesetechniques.

The tips are:

Numbered EquationsColumn-Spanning EquationsCentered Title Followed by Two-Column TextFigures and Caption Cross ReferencesColumn-Spanning FiguresSpecial Characters and Tedious-to-Type WordsBibliographic ReferencesOther Resources

If you have techniques or corrections you'd like to have me include on thispage, please email me at mailto:[email protected] . If you have generalquestions on Microsoft Word, see Microsoft's technical support page athttp://support.microsoft.com/directory/default.asp .

These tips are only suggestions are are not endorsed by Microsoft .

Numbered Equations

Numbered equations normally look like this:

f = ma (1)

with the equation (nearly) centered in the column and the equation number justified to the right. Although Microsoft Word has an equation numberingfeature as part of its caption feature, it puts the equation number either aboveor below the equation, not on the same line as is normally done.

One workable method, suggested by Eric Kiersky of Microsoft, is to use a 1x2table, with the equation centered in the left cell and a field number right-

justified in the right cell, like this:

f = ma (2)

Both cells have their contents centered vertically. Of course the borders should

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be turned off (border width set to zero) to make them invisible using TableProperties.

To make the equation numbers, insert a sequence field in the right cell. Fromthe "Insert" menu choose "Field...". In the "Field" dialog box, pick the"Numbering" category and "Seq" field name. Type "Eq" (or whatever you wantto call your equation number field) in the text box after "SEQ". This is allshown in the dialog box below. Do this for every numbered equation.

To cross reference the equation number in the regular text, pick "Cross-reference ..." from the "Insert" menu with the cursor placed at the point wherethe cross reference should appear.

Now the equations will be numbered sequentially. If you add a new equationbetween previously numbered equations, the numbering will not updateimmediately. It should update during "Print" or "Print Preview".

For more tips on equations (and also the source of the above idea fornumbering equations), seehttp://www.ist.uwaterloo.ca/ec/equations/equation.html .

Here's another technique that I ran across recently that I like better than theabove: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212381/EN-US/ .

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Column-Spanning Equations

Sometimes an equation is too wide to fit in the width of one column. If youuse the table technique above for equations, you can simply widen theequation's table into the adjacent column. To make the text in the adjacentcolumn(s) flow properly, turn on "Text wrapping - Around" in the TablePro erties dialo box as shown below.




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Centered Title Follow ed by Tw o-Column Text

Most conference papers have a title centered at thetop of the first page followed by two-column text forthe remainder of the paper, as shown to the right.

For setting up columns, it helps to see the columnboundaries. To make these visible, bring up the"Option" dialog box on the "Tools" menu and put acheck mark next to "Text boundaries", as shownbelow.




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Type the paper's title (and anything else that goes with it, like authorinformation) at the top of the first page. Then insert a "continuous sectionbreak" beneath this. Get the section break from the "Break ..." entry on the"Insert" menu. With the cursor below the section break, pick the "Columns ..."entry under the "Format" menu. The dialog box looks like this:

Pick the number of columns you want (normally two). Note that these columnswill exist in this section of the paper, which starts after the continuous sectionbreak and goes until the next section break.




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Figure and Caption Cross References

Figures in technical documents are not normally placed in line with the text.

This is because most authors prefer to have figures appear strictly either atthe top or bottom of the column. A text box is the most obvious way to placefigures where you want them, but it suffers from two problems. One is thattext boxes tend to jump around as the document's text is edited, sometimeseven jumping into the margin. I have no solution for this problem, althoughthere is a solution using Visual Basic from www.officevba.com described here .

The other problem with text boxes is that the figure numbers placed insidethem cannot be cross-referenced from the regular text. This problem can besolved by using a frame instead of a text box. Text boxes are part of the"graphics layer", while frames are part of the "text layer". Numbered items inthe graphics layer are not available for cross reference.

Start by making a regular text box and inserting the graphics and caption.Insert the caption with the "Caption ..." selection on the "Insert" menu. Thenconvert the text box to a frame by accessing the text box's properties. Formatthe frame from the frame properties dialog box as shown below.

I usually find it best to follow the order I just described, that is, insert thegraphics into the text box before converting to a frame.

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Column-Spanning FiguresSometimes a figure is too wide for just one column.In this case the fi ure can s an the entire width of




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the paper from the left margin to the right margin,as shown to the right.

This can be accomplished by following the procedureabove for figures . Just make a text box that spansthe columns and convert it to a frame after addingthe graphics and caption. One problem is that thevisible border around the frame may in fact appearas multiple borders around different elements in thefigure (e.g. one border around the caption andanother border around the graphics). This can befixed by first inserting a table in the text box whosecells hold the graphics, caption, and whatever elseis part of the figure. Then instead of using a visibleborder around the frame, make a visible borderaround the table.

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Special Characters and Tedious-to-Type W ords

Technical documents are more likely than most to contain special charactersand formulae. Word can insert special characters using Insert->Symbols. Forinstance, the umlaut over the "o" in Schrdinger can be inserted from thesymbol dialog box as shown below. This is also where you can get the and symbols.

Sometimes you have to type the same word containing special characters orspecial formatting over and over. For instance, you may use the phrase"Schrdinger's equation" several times in a document. You can cut and pasteto make this easier, or, even better, you can use Word's "AutoCorrect" featureunder the "Tools" menu, as suggested by Simon Corston-Oliver of Microsoft




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Research. For instance, I can have Word automatically replace the characters"SE" with "Schrdinger's equation", by doing the following in "AutoCorrect":

I can automatically insert "S I" whenever I type "SI" by doing the following inAutoCorrect:




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Bibliographic References

Word has no built-in solution for making a list of references and insertingcitations to those references in the text. One solution is to use EndNote , aWord add-in from ISI ResearchSoft. (For those of you at Microsoft Research,where I am, you can get a site-licensed copy. Ask me where it is.) EndNoteruns as a separate program that is used to build up a bibliographic database.EndNote can also be controlled from add-in menu items in Word, letting you

switch quickly between the programs, insert citations in your text, andautomatically format a bibliography in your Word document.

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Other Resources

NASA web site devoted to formatting for technical documents, including tipsand templates for Microsoft Word

MS Word MVP FAQ site for lots of information on Word contributed by manypeople




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There is a starter guide to Word 2007 that describes how to insert tables,pictures, etc.

Chikrii Softlab makes software for converting between TeX and Worddocuments

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Technical Publishing With Microsoft Word